Sergey Brin on the Microsoft-facebook deal – “Some of our competitors might be willing to spend very large amounts of money…and we’re really interested in doing sustainable economic deals so we would rather not participate in those sorts of transactions.”

Coming from the company that drove inflation into web company valuations (on the back of strong free cash flow/stock) to keep Yahoo! and numerous other web players out of the acquisition ring on numerous occasions. Ouch, must hurt!

To quote another Googler, the views expressed here are mine alone, and not those of my employer.

“Mark Zuckerberg dropped an indication that Facebook is considering opening up at some point. While there was no mention of when that would occur, the fact that they are considering an opening of their network is significant. By opening up their platform to make identities transportable will help them to become a Google competitor. Without opening their platform, Facebook is indeed risking becoming a fad. Conversely, the older generation’s presence on Facebook is expanding rapidly and this generation is known to stick with the sites that they use.

While it is impossible to say what would happen if Facebook falls off their high horse that they are currently riding or what will happen when Google launches their social platform, Facebook does have a shot at becoming an industry leader. It’s as simple as that. Facebook now needs to make all the right moves and currently they have a board of advisors that can help them execute successfully. If Facebook does indeed decide to make identities transportable, I believe they could become the center hub for a large portion of identities online.”

Though the Customer DNA wars have been on for a while Facebook can potentially crash this party with homegrown intelligence… would be interesting to know how this impacts their own valuation and companies like OpenID and Plaxo. What’s also really interesting is Google’s opinion that The web is the platform. Devaluing Facebook? Or love for the web the way it was supposed to be? I could argue either way.